


god wants you to tie a Sheet Bend with it

by weedsinavacantlot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Fix-It, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Jack Kline, M/M, Minor Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Set post 15x19 and in a world where 15x20 eats my nuts and doesn't exist, and also mortality a little I guess, ish, look it's about complicated relationships and raising a child who is kind of an adult
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27989040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weedsinavacantlot/pseuds/weedsinavacantlot
Summary: Castiel's eyelids open like the shrug of the universe. Weighty, salt crusted, and painful. Jack stands above him, haloed by cloudbursts and sunlight.---A list of things that come after you’ve won your free will: lease agreements, grocery shopping, a gnawing reminder of your own mortality, gardening, time to yell at and apologize to family, and a chance to make choices that matter.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	1. Carry On

Castiel's eyelids open like the shrug of the universe. Weighty, salt crusted, and painful. Jack stands above him, haloed by cloudbursts and sunlight. 

“Jack?”

They’re in a wheat field, and Castiel can feel the crush of rotted mulch beneath his back. Jack pulls him to his feet, and for a second Castiel feels like he’s been wrenched too far forwards, about to crash face first into the decay he was just sinking into. A hand braces on his shoulder, steadies him. Jack's hand.

“I died.” He’s done it enough to know the trappings of it. He knows what last breaths and final regrets feel like. The comfort of despair more familiar than the trenchcoat with permanent creases marking the every bend of his vessel.

“I know. I couldn’t….” Wind kicks up behind them, a slight shiver working its way through Jack, “I couldn’t leave you there. I know it wasn’t my decision to make.”

The pulse of Castiel’s heart sounds louder in his ears at that. The crush of his vertebrae should have been the first hint, the ache of back pain being so uniquely human. “What’s happened, Jack?”

“I became god. Just for a bit.”

He covers the basics. Chuck’s disappearing act with all of humanity, brief guest appearances from Lucifer and Michael, and the black hole at the centre of him that absorbed energy like a dying star. 

“And now?”

“There was…” Jack trails off. “I wasn’t all knowing. I saw the future unfolding. Like looking at a maze from above. And … I thought I could create balance. When I got Chuck’s power, god's power, it seemed so clear what to do with it. But I think that’s the whole point. That it seems so clear. So I got rid of it.”

Castiel processes this. “You… got rid of it.”

“Yes.”

The wheat stalks rustle. “Where are we?”

“Oh, no! Just the power. This is earth. We’re on earth.”

“Sam said that Chuck showed him a vision of a future without god. He said that the universe was thrown out of order and that our world ended in chaos. Or at the very least all of our lives.” 

“Chuck was… not known for telling the truth. The universe we were living in had been unbalanced for millennia. That power… it was older than Chuck. The all consuming nature of it couldn’t exist in one being, even with someone like Amara as a counterweight. I think it was waiting to be given up.”

“So you gave it up for balance?” Castiel says.

“Well…” Jack fidgets. “And cereal doesn’t taste the same when you’re god.”

“I’m proud of you Jack.” Castiel smiles, he steps towards his son. “I’m so proud of you.”

* * *

They lease a one bedroom apartment. The realtor who shows them the place seems confused. She starts by asking if it’s Jack’s first apartment and when Castiel says “Yes. Mine as well”, her stare is blank, and Castiel feels awash with comfort. He is happy to be human, and he is happy to have been changed by this world and the people in it. A person in it. But it’s a reminder that he gets to keep doing that. When Jack pipes up and says “Cas, there’s no demon circles anywhere!” the realtor seems to hit her limit and tells them she’ll give them the room and wait outside. 

One week later they break the lease and move into a bigger place, as Castiel and Jack learn that most human fathers and sons actually prefer to have separate bedrooms, and single room motels are an exception not the norm to sleeping arrangements. Especially when it turns out certain ex-half-angel-gods snore.

* * *

Castiel has nothing left of his grace. The consequence of a neonate god ripping him out of The Empty with the finesse of a resident surgeon's first botched procedure. It’s not his first run as a human though, and there is a cautious familiarity to it. Jack still has something. He is human; they had double and triple and quadruple checked. But you don’t just shed the flaked scales of god and come away clean. It’s not that he can heal with the press of a palm anymore, but when Jack burns himself on the stovetop, blistered and cracked skin smoothes out clean and new within the week. He can’t float pencils through the air, but sometimes when he concentrates hard enough he can get toothpicks and Q-Tips to flick in his direction, like the needle of a compass finding north.

* * *

Jack waits two more weeks in their new place before he brings it up. Castiel is scraping away at a nonstick pan with a clump of rusted steel wool, he’s pretty sure he’s done something wrong but hasn’t figured out quite what yet.

“When do we get to go see Sam and Dean?”

He says it like an eventuality. Castiel swallows the ‘Never’ before it can form. He places the ruined cookware back into the overfull sink and watches the waves that peak around it. Eyes following the steady rise and fall of the sudsy water, he lets his breath match the movement. He turns and the ‘Not yet’ gets caught as well. Jack is squinting at the fine print of a cereal box that got left on the table.

Castiel knows he’s being selfish. “Soon.”

* * *

Castiel’s resolve to avoid the Winchesters breaks down right after his truck. The Ford had been old before, but now it’s decrepit. It wheezes a trail of something everywhere him and Jack go, dark splotches staining pavement. Just like last time he searches how to fix it, but the manuals online show the broken down anatomy of a machine that is more valves and tubes than Castiel’s twelve years on earth have prepared him for. Once, he might have had a quiet sense of awe at how the human capacity for creation inched closer to the same complexity that god had once breathed into them. Now he’s mostly just frustrated.

So he calls a mechanic. Dean had always taken care of the upkeep of the impala, and said “All mechanics are thieves, they’re out there charging you a 500% markup on a serpentine belt, and then installing it with next to no tools in 30 seconds. If I wanted to get fucked that bad I’d ask out Crowley”. The garage he finds online is a little ways out of town, but it’s only got one review that’s not five stars which just reads “Owner told me to fuck off when I asked him to change my windshield fluid.” so it seems like a good bet. The kind of mechanic Dean would approve of. The number dials and Castiel sits perched at the kitchen table, the sharp staccato ring innocently connecting his call.

“Hey, Vic’s Garage, how can I help?” Dean says.

It’s not that he hadn’t thought about Dean since he was back. Dean Winchester is the loose tooth in the mouth of his life that he can’t keep prodding at. He’d hoped beyond belief that Dean would find a life beyond hunting, the proof of it though is a white hot iron through his emotions. Relief, desperation, terror. The visceral reminder of Dean’s continued existence is worse.

“Uhhh, hello? Anyone there?” 

“No.” Castiel hangs up. He waits. His phone lights up again with an unknown number and a mocking ‘Maybe Vic’s Garage’ underneath it. It goes to voicemail twice before it lights up again with Dean Winchester. That goes to voicemail twice as well. 

_Dean Winchester_ 10:43am

Is this a joke.

_Dean Winchester_ 10:43am

Who is this.

_Dean Winchester_ 10:46 am

Cas?

He’ll have to see Dean soon. He knows that. Over the years he’s tried to stay away, been forced to stay away, had sabbaticals and retreats time and time again from the Winchesters. From Dean Winchester. But like food scraps circling the drain into a running garbage disposal, he’s bound to get pulled back in.

Dean beats him to the punch of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In a year of curveballs, getting re-obsessed with Supernatural has somehow come out on top as the most inexplicable part of 2020 for me. I have no idea what I'm doing here (though I DID binge Seasons 12-15 in a month because if I'm bastardizing characters for my own purpose I want to know how far off base I'm going). I know this first chapter is a little short but I just wanted to get something out here so I could force myself into a publishing schedule. I'll aim to have the next chapter out by the end of next week maybe?
> 
> ALSO Thank you SO MUCH to [provocation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocation/pseuds/provocation) for responding at 10pm to my desperate plea for line edits and a full walkthrough on how to use AO3's UI.


	2. It's Like Coming Home

The door is shaking in its frame. Little tremors of dowels and wood glue coming loose under the force of someone knocking. It’s only been a month back in the world, but already Jack is unlearning the reflexive clench of adrenaline that came from living in the bunker, these days he associates someone at the door more with chickpea masala deliveries than monsters and bloodshed. He swings the door open without a second of hesitation, ready to call for Castiel to bring his wallet.

“Oh! Sam and Dean are here!”

The flaked door jamb frames Sam and Dean, a splash of puce coloured apartment hallway backgrounding them, their set brows falling quickly into matching looks of confusion.

“Jack! What’s going-” Sam says.

Lights don’t flicker as Castiel steps out from the kitchen, there’s no sparks, and no barn doors to dramatically slam open. But Dean feels the tip of the earth on its axis just as sharply as that first time. 

“Cas?” The single syllable wheezes out of Dean like he’s been stabbed.

There’s a moment where no one breathes. Castiel trapped in the singularity of Dean’s stare. Sam frantically looking from Jack, to Castiel, to Dean, to Castiel, to Jack, like a bobble head knocked off the shelf. 

Sam breaks finally, surges forward with a brief pat on the curve of Jacks elbow. An apology, as he brushes into the room, pulling Castiel into one more I-don’t-know-how-you’re-alive embrace. Dean still doesn’t move. He stands there vacant, an unsteady rise and fall of his chest the only reassurance that he hasn’t managed to die, eyes open and on his feet. 

“You’re alive.” Dean says.

Sam pulls back, finally drawing Castiel’s eyes away from Dean, “Did… Did Jack bring you back? What are you guys doing here?” Sam says.

The door handle is still loosely gripped in Jack’s hand, forgotten as he tries to keep up with what’s going on, “They don’t know?” 

“No Jack we don’t. Some of us aren’t all knowing gods!” Dean says.

“I’m not! Well, not anymore.” Jack holds up his hands, as proof and in surrender of Dean’s quickly rising anger.

“What?”

They explain it all back to Sam and Dean. The wheat field, the maze seen from above. Balance and cereal. 

“And you just. Didn’t bother to let us know.” Dean’s working himself into something, batton shutters slamming against the windstorm as it moves from the twitch of his knuckles to a hot flash in the bridge of his spine. Relief quickly getting pulled below the undercurrent of anguish.

“Dean. We-” Castiel says.

“So what, you’ve just been playing house here this whole time?”

“I wasn’t sure how to tell you. I was going to-”

“Yeah? Next time maybe try an ‘I’m back from the dead for the eighth time’ text! Or- ” 

There’s a soft tap from the open door frame. “Um…Hello?” The ubereats driver nearly folds under the weight as everyone turns to stare at him. “Delivery for Jack Kline?”

* * *

Jack still eats like it’s his first time coming back to life. Or his second. Quantity wise it’s a little excessive, like a teen going through his first three growth spurts all at once, but mostly he wants to try a bit of everything. Scrolling through takeout menus always veers towards a disagreement, as Castiel tries to reason that they won’t be able to finish nineteen different rolls of sushi before they go bad, and Jack taps away at the add to order button anyway. It’s hard to fight it any more than that. Sometimes it still seems like Jack subconsciously lives on a countdown clock, waiting for one last apocalypse to swallow him.

Luckily this means they’ve received six different curries, three dishes of rice, and way too much naan. Which manages to be just enough to feed the four people packed around Castiel’s wobbly goodwill dining table.

“How did you find us?” Castiel says.

“Sam tracked your phone. After your crank call.” A plate full of lamb korma and a quick few minutes to breathe in the ensuite bathroom has dialed Dean back, the light roil of betrayal and grief moved to a backburner for the time being.

“So if there’s no god now... what happened to heaven? Hell?” Sam says, his quickly cooling food preparing for further neglect as he prepares his law school dropout line of questioning.

“We don’t know.” Castiel says.

“What about all the souls then? Where did they go?”

The casual scrape of metal across porcelain stops. Dean taps out a nervous sort of rhythm on the table. Castiel says “Well-”, reconsiders, places his own utensils next to his plate, and folds the skin between his eyes into a familiar squint.

“We don’t know.” Jack says. 

Before existential dread can set in, each of them folds the thought up like freshly cleaned sheets. Tucking them into linen closets that have collectively spent 60 plus years packed full of any desperate thought they weren’t ready to starch and iron.

“Are you still hunting?” Castiel asks.

“What? Oh, the garage. Well we’re not not hunting.” Dean says.

Sam glances between the two of them, never quite used to the way they’ll continue a conversation like they’re the only two there, “We were cutting back. One or two a month, nothing that was more than a 5 hour drive away.”

Attention drawn back into the room and away from Dean, Castiel looks to Sam, “Were?”

“Dean... uh.”

“We had a run in at a Vamp nest in Canton, Ohio. Fucked up my back a little.” Dean says.

Like a winch pulled tight, Sam's expression narrows, “A little?”

“Well-”

“Dean it was six hours in emergency surgery, where they couldn’t tell me if you were going to ever walk again, let alone come out of a medically induced coma.” Sam bites the words out, bitter and unresolved as he pushes down the image of Dean begging him to let him go as a 911 operator calmly asked for an address. 

“Yeah, ok. I almost bit it. Anyway. I’m fine, but not exactly in the best condition of my life for hunting. It’s uh… partial retirement I guess.”

“So you’re not hunting.” Castiel says.

Dean rolls his shoulders, ignoring the pinprick of strained, tight, pierced, muscle that still twinges when he thinks about it too long, “Alright. I guess I’m not hunting.” 

“Eileen and Bobby have this whole Hunters network up and running now anyway. Things feel less urgent.” Sam says.

It had started like this. There was a werewolf case out of backwater Mississippi. Predictable M.O. Seasonally inappropriate wildlife attacks that local sheriffs were writing off as rabies, or overly socialized bears, or whatever hand-waved explanation best fit three severed arms, a handful of fingers, and a man's foot showing up littered across lakeside hiking trails. Eileen had tracked them to a rental cabin just on the outskirts of the town’s campsite, only to discover two young girls, one barely out of her teens and the other barely into them. Both of them underfed, twin looks of desperation in the set of their shoulders. They didn’t want to kill, they didn’t want to hunt, the oldest had known what Eileen was and begged that if she was going to kill them to at least spare the younger girl. 

Eileen had made a call and within a week the two of them were settled in with a cousin of Bess’s in Indiana. 

Three weeks later Charlie stumbled across a group of three Rugarus who had bastardized some spells from a coven of local witches so that they could survive off of raw pork. They spent most of their time frequenting local butchers, buying them out of all their scraps and bad cuts of meat. And then a series of vamp nests in Austin, and Dallas that were living off of hospital blood sent out as biohazardous waste. And then a couple of Sirens keeping their heads down in Idaho. Skinwalkers living like the Fitzgerald’s in Kentucky, ghouls keeping only to graveyards across the whole west coast, a den of vegetarian vetala bordering Montana and Alberta. And so on. Something had changed. Most hunters knew by then that the Winchesters boy had stepped into the recently vacated position of Almighty, and assumed that his promises of being ‘hands-off’ hadn’t lasted. And hunters don’t sit around waiting for the matching thud of a pair of shoes. 

It was still early days, and there was still the occasional hunter who would rather shoot anything that wasn’t like them, but people were coming around. 

“Garth and his crew work with weres’ and any shifters, we’ve got a team for vamps and rugarus, another for dealing with actual salt and burns, and… Well there’s less stabbing and more talking these days. Helping people get settled.” Sam says.

“And I was always better at the stabbing part anyway.” Dean says.

Dinner passes in an unsteady rhythm, a warped funhouse distortion of their few and far between ‘family’ dinners at the bunker. Silences slipping into unfamiliar gaps that used to be filled by a joke from Dean, or a mishandled reference from Castiel. They muddle through, adjusting around the tension of the things they’re not talking about. Jack tells Sam and Dean about the corn snake Castiel got him as a late birthday present, they listen as he describes her sheds and which fake plants in the terrarium are her favourite, and carefully no one mentions the last snake Jack had cared for. Sam, through a slight blush, mentions that Eileen had moved into the bunker just weeks after the averted apocalypse.

“You guys are also always welcome back at the bunker. It was your home as well.” Sam says. Dean nods along jerkily, the shake and pop of pressure building in him around words that won’t form sentences. 

Castiel opens his mouth, madlibs excuse primed. ‘Thank you for the invitation but since we (verb) the (adjective) (noun) here, and Jack is now involved in (local activity) it would be best for us to stay here.’ 

“Do you still have my Star Wars lego set?” Jack says.

“Yeah, kid. Of course.” Dean says.

And Castiel feels his resolve weaken.

* * *

The front entryway is cramped, but Castiel stands neatly tucked into the gap between wall hooks and the radiator as Dean and Sam pull their boots on. A distant soundtrack of Jack bumping plates together as he finishes off the dishes. There’s the sharp chirp from Sam's pocket of an incoming call, and he excuses himself back down the hall as he answers.

Dean watches the retreating back of his brother, takes a short huff of a breath and tries to access an emotion without it getting hidden by the facade of rage, “Look I-, I really thought that was gonna be the one that took for good. I didn’t-” He glances to the door, holds eye contact with the chain lock for a moment, before resolving himself back to Castiel with the clap of a hand on his shoulder. Unaware of the reverse tableau they’ve created, opposite hand, to the mirrored shoulder, of the wrong person. “I’m glad you’re back, man. Really.” 

“I’m glad to be back. I...” Castiel hesitates. They’re not really alone. Not truly. He can hear the lull of Sam’s phone call just around the corner, knows that every second word from him and Dean is drifting into the other room, filling out a half formed conversation. 

“I know Sam already mentioned it, but your and Jack’s rooms are still all set up.” Dean says. “If…” 

The moment is passing.

“Cas? I think I broke the dishwasher.” Jack calls from the kitchen.

The moment has passed.

* * *

The bite and hold of February is giving way to spring in Kansas, the arid rub of sunlight reflecting off the mirror finishing on the Impala. It’s still too cold for rolled down windows, but Dean is stubborn, shivering through the whip of wind in the car. 

“You’re never going to guess who called.” Sam says.

“What, another best friend return from the dead and dial the wrong number?” Dean says.

“I mean kind of. It was Rowena.”

“Huh. She’s topside?”

“Sounds like it. And a little pissed to have lost her throne and title. Honestly though it’s great timing. Eileen and Bobby have been talking about how we need someone who can get us an in with some more witches. Between her and Max I think we’ll have a good start.”

“Hasn’t she managed to get herself on the no call list for half of the east coast witch population?”

“Well, now’s as good of a time as any for her to start playing nice again.”

“I guess.” Dean shifts in his seat, looks to the passing cut of canola and corn fields, an exaggerated discomfort once again finding its way up his spine.

“What? What’s wrong.”

"I know Jack said he had no idea what happened with… any of it. And we haven’t heard about masses of people rising from the grave, so it’s not like everyone came back. But now with Cas, and Rowena... I guess I’m just wondering if…”

“If he picked and chose favourites?”

“Yeah.” 

The tide of their conversation breaks like waves around the sea stack that is Mary Winchester. They float back to shore a second later.

“It sounds like… he was trying to let the universe right itself, I don’t think going around raising people from the dead really lines up with that, even if he made an exception for Cas. As for Rowena…. Well. She always made a point of having insurance policies when she was alive. I doubt being queen of hell changed that.” 

“Hm. Yeah.” 

The click and unfurl of some blues standard mixtape that Dean had dug out of the glovebox plays. Sam’s staring out the window, conscious of Dean continuing to turn some thought over in his mind like a river rock with smoothed out edges. If he pushes he knows it’ll slide from bedrock and float away in a torrent of frustration. So he waits him out.

“Do you think I turned out like dad.” It slips out in the space between passing lanes, the narrowing of the highway boxing Dean in. 

“What?” Sam says, the blur of distant farm buildings forgotten. 

“Nah. Nevermind.”

“What do you mean? Dean?” 

“It’s… With everything that happened with Jack. When he was born. With mom and then… trying to take out Chuck. I just….” The rub of his palm down the side of his face grounds him, just for a second. “Do you think Cas wants to keep Jack away because he knows I’ll fuck him up more.” 

“Dean…” 

“Forget it, man.” 

Sam turns to Dean, picture perfect body language of an attentive brother, met of course by the stiff picture perfect body language of his avoidant brother, “You could try talking to him about it. Or better yet Jack.” 

“Ha. Yeah. Right.” 

“I’m serious Dean. You don’t want to end up like dad? Then do something he never would have done. Admit you made a mistake. Let him be angry, or sad, or upset or whatever. The guilt’s not going to go away if you just ignore it.” 

“What about you? Can I just ignore you into shutting up?” Dean fiddles with the tape deck, cranks the volume up so the strum of Robert Johnson fills the car, overpowering even the rough growl revs of the Impala.

“You’re the one that asked!” Sam says, straining to be heard.

* * *

In the end Castiel ends up breaking the second lease. 

Sam and Dean keep visiting for dinners, Eileen joining them each time as well. There’s an uncertainty for Castiel, with words left unsaid and words that can’t be taken back, but each dinner their time signature falls more and more in line. Lingering silences, replaced by cautious laughter, replaced by enthusiastic crosstalk. DVD’s from the bunker begin to litter their living room, and one night Sam shows up with a carefully annotated set of binders filled with abbreviated course curriculums from third grade through ninth grade for science, math, social studies, and english. Apparently Castiel’s pedagogical approach of recounting, in somewhat cloudy detail, specific events from the early 1900’s, mid 1600’s and 500 BCE, wasn’t going to cut it for Jack’s education. Castiel and Eileen’s friendship is still new, but she manages to drive the final nail into the coffin. 

“ _Let them sleep,"_ Eileen says. Dean, Sam and Jack’s snores are echoing from the couch, as Castiel and Eileen hover over Castiel’s slowly dripping coffee machine. Dean’s insistence on finishing the Dollars Trilogy had kept them up until almost 2am, with everyone passing out before the credits had even begun to roll on the last movie. “ _It’s not every night they make it through a few hours without a nightmare._ ”

“ _Jack’s the same._ ”

“ _Yeah? And you?_ ” She smiles at Castiel, a knowing sliver of a look, “ _You might all be the most verbally constipated men I know, but I’m glad you have each other. Even if we never talk about it, it helps being around the people you stared down the end of the world with._ ”

Castiel feels the dam gathering water, watches as Jack shuffles in his sleep, curls into the arm of the couch, leaning just slightly up against Dean. “ _It does._ ”

The move back into the bunker takes only a few days. 

* * *

The parking lot is half full, a menagerie of Priuses and Smart Cars with Castiel’s Ford and the Impala nestled between them like bricks mislaid in mortar. It’s the kind of health foods store that has three gluten free aisles, no Doritos, and motivational quotes painted on the walls of bathroom stalls. Crisp bleach white parking spots, complete with hybrid charge stations like vacant flag poles. 

Two days ago Castiel had returned from ‘grocery shopping’ at a nearby Gas n Sip with nothing but beef jerky, a bear shaped bottle of honey, a 2 litre of coke, and a bunch of bananas that were so dark they might as well have been half composted. He had eaten two. Which according to Sam meant it was finally time that everyone in the bunker learned what the inside of a proper grocery store looked like, despite Dean’s protests that Sam didn’t even really cook. Eileen got lumped in when she tried to argue that _some_ Gas n Sips had a deli section.

“So the quarter is just insurance that we bring the cart back after borrowing it?” Jack says.

The front wheel of their cart is screaming out a teeth grinding psalm, it’s rhythm matching to the quake of rocksalt over pavement. “Yes.” Castiel says as he leans the weight back, tries to unbalance the whole thing for a moment of silence.

“Here.” Dean aims a kick at the wheel, and it spins around loosely, a little symphony of rattles as something in the bolt and washer slips loose. Cautiously Castiel lowers it back down to cement, and throws a grateful look to Dean when it rolls on with a barely noticeable squeak.

“It seems like it would be worth more than twenty five cents.” Jack says.

“That’s a good observation Jack.” Castiel agrees. “Did you want to push the cart?”

“Yes!” 

Dean has to look away, unable to reconcile the soft roll of his stomach at the open unguarded way Castiel always talks to Jack. It’s not that Castiel goes around in the world with Winchester levels of pretense normally, but there’s something in his tone, or posture. A level of singular and untarnished care that he has for his son. It leaves Dean jealous of the attention, jealous of the ability to offer any feeling that unabashed, jealous of anyone with a father figure whose affection could ever come that easily. Roiling and ashamed at the same time. He knows it’s too much emotion for someone else’s conversation about grocery carts.

The hiss of the doors give way to the cloying scent of just ripened produce, and the tinny mumble of a local soft rock station. Sam begins to break right, stopping as everyone trails behind him. “Oh hold on, actually I was thinking we should split up.”

“Great idea Sammy, best way to look for clues.” Dean says.

“Shut up, it’ll be faster. And I think you’ve had enough influence on Jack’s eating habits.” Sam shoves a list into Dean’s hand, and a spare basket into Castiel’s. “Here.” 

“Uh…” Dean glances to Eileen and Jack, but gets a helpless shrug from Eileen. Jack has already begun to wander off towards a nearby stack of pomegranate, cart in tow.

“You and Cas can manage that.” Sam says, jogging away from Castiel and Dean, and towards impending disaster as Jack reaches for a fruit at the bottom of the pile. “And stick to the list Dean!”

* * *

“Well I was going to get some curly fries. But I’m starting to think that’s not something they carry here.” Dean motions vaguely at a display filled with starch-free, salt-free chips. “Ok then, what do we got.” He shakes the list out, “Why the fuck does he want brown rice? I’m getting white rice.”

They wander down aisle five, led on by the sign promising, Grains, Canned Beans, and Pasta. “You don’t eat rice.” Castiel says.

“It’s the principle of the thing Cas.” Dean says. They pass by colourful boxes of spinach and lentil pasta, slowing as they reach what seems to be a neverending shelf of rice. “Goddamn there’s a lot of different kinds.” He leans in, eyes tracking down the packages. 

The hard plastic of the basket bites into Castiel’s hand, he stares at the soft fade of Dean’s neck, into nape, into hair, framed by basmati and arborio. It’s their first time alone since he’s been back. Since the dungeon. And it’s under the cold harsh light of grocery store fluorescence, but neither of them is saying anything about it. Dean hasn’t said anything about it. 

Castiel had held his breath for millenia. The same handful of particles suspended in his lungs from just four days after the beginning of time itself. In a half moulded motel off of the I-5 in 2010 he had taken his first shuddering breath as Dean Winchester clapped him on the back and said “You could blend in a bit better man. People get the heebie jeebies. You know, from the whole unblinking rain man shtick.” Carbon that should have been fossil spilling out. The show of normalcy became a novelty, which became a habit, which twice now has become a necessity. But he is still well acquainted with the feeling of waiting for something that seems like it might never come.

“Cas?” Dean turns to look at him.

Castiel reaches past him and pulls a bag of long grain wild rice off the shelf. “You don’t eat rice.”

* * *

“I know you and Cas were mostly eating takeout and frozen food, but there’s a lot of vitamins that you’re not getting if you don’t eat enough vegetables. So I thought we could pick some stuff out together.” The mister is running, a fine spray of water splattering the back of Sam’s hand as he picks through heads of broccoli and cauliflower.

“Ok. I don’t like broccoli though. Or peas. Or brussel sprouts.” Jack says.

“Well uh, how about… uh” Sam grabs a twist tie wrapped bunch of spinach and holds it out for Jack. 

“I thought Dean said spinach was ‘rabbit food’.” 

“ _You’re really selling the produce aisle, Sam._ ” Eileen says.

“Right. Why don’t you pick out some fruit then? Any fruit you want.” Sam gestures to the fruit displays awkwardly, just narrowly avoiding a quick swat to a pyramid of red delicious apples, “Oranges? Raspberries?” He says, desperation leaking into his voice.

“I’ve never had raspberries before. What do they taste like?” Jack picks up a container of raspberries, turns it upside down, rightside up, before leaning in and trying to smell them.

“ _Here,_ ” Eileen’s fingers pry the plastic clamshell open, the tips of her nails staining as she plucks a raspberry out. “ _Try one._ ”

She pulls at Jack’s hand, placing the berry right in the centre of his palm. He rolls it back and forth for a second, and then pops it into his mouth with a considered chew.

“Hey! Don’t, _don’t do that_. We didn’t pay for that, Jack!” Sam says. Jack brings his hand up to his face and starts to open his mouth. “No, wait. Don’t spit it out!”

“ _It’s just a raspberry, Sam._ ” Eileen says, “ _Afraid of some petty crime?_ ”

“We’re going to get in trouble!”

“ _Haven’t you spent most of your life impersonating an FBI agent? Live a little._ ” 

“Alright fine, _ok_ , uh,” Sam grabs a pear. He bites a quarter sized piece off, and gestures with the fruit, letting juice flick across the aisle. “ _Happy?_ ”

Sam and Jack spin around at the sound of someone clearing their throat, Eileen turning just half a beat after them. “Excuse me. Sir.” 

* * *

Castiel and Dean are debating the relative merits of jelly brands when Dean’s phone starts to chirp at him from his front pocket, a grimacing photo of Sam lighting up the screen. “Can’t I leave you alone for five minutes?” Dean says into the phone.

“We’re out front.”

“What?” Dean whips around, the plate glass storefront giving him an immediate view of Sam, Eileen, and Jack standing next to the cart return.

“We uhhh…” Sam trails off.

Dean’s ASL still isn’t very good, but Eileen very politely fingerspells “ _kicked out_ ” and “ _security guard_ ” from the parking lot, and he’s able to piece together the rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very funny that I said this would come out one week after the first chapter. Writing hard guys. When will the next chapter come out? Great question. Bully me on the internet about it.
> 
> Love and light and continued endless thanks to [provocation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/provocation/pseuds/provocation) for telling me how commas work.
> 
> [Also is it allowed to make memes of your own fic?](https://weedsinavacantlot.tumblr.com/post/645043029169799168/god-wants-you-to-tie-a-sheet-bend-with-it)


End file.
